System and method for adaptive quality estimation for machine translation post-editing

ABSTRACT

A translation text output corresponding to a machine translation from a source text of a first language to a target text of a second language is received. The translation text output includes at least one sentence including at least one translation chunk. A first translation quality confidence estimate for the at least one sentence of the text and a second translation quality confidence estimate for the at least one translation chunk are received. A first translation confidence indicator for the at least one sentence and a second translation confidence indicator for the at least one translation chunk are displayed. The first translation confidence indicator is determined from among a plurality of different first translation confidence indicators based upon the first translation quality confidence estimate. The second translation confidence indicator is determined from among a plurality of different second translation confidence indicators based upon the second translation quality confidence estimate.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates generally to a method, system, andcomputer program product for providing quality estimation for machinetranslation (MT). More particularly, the present invention relates to amethod, system, and computer program product for providing adaptivequality estimation for machine translation during post-editing of atranslated document.

BACKGROUND

Machine translation (MT) is a category of computational linguistics inwhich a computer is used to translate text or speech from one languageto another such as from English to Chinese. The process of machinetranslation does not typically include providing only a one-to-one wordtranslation of a source language to a target language. Machinetranslation often involves using knowledge of rules of grammar, syntax,and semantic meaning of the source language to translate the sourcelanguage to the target language to convey the same meaning within thetarget language as was conveyed in the source language. Statisticalmachine translation uses statistical models whose parameters are derivedfrom the analysis of bilingual textual corpora to perform translationfrom a source language text to a target language text. Rule-basedmachine translation uses linguistic information about the sourcelanguage and target language retrieved retrieve from dictionaries andgrammars to translate text from the source language to the textlanguage.

SUMMARY

The illustrative embodiments provide a method, system, and computerprogram product. An embodiment of a method includes receiving atranslation text output, the translation text output corresponding to amachine translation from a source text of a first language to a targettext of a second language. In the embodiment, the translation textoutput includes at least one sentence, the at least one sentenceincluding at least one translation chunk. The embodiment furtherincludes receiving a first translation quality confidence estimate forthe at least one sentence of the text, and receiving a secondtranslation quality confidence estimate for the at least one translationchunk. The embodiment further includes displaying a first translationconfidence indicator for the at least one sentence. In the embodiment,the first translation confidence indicator is determined from among aplurality of different first translation confidence indicators basedupon the first translation quality confidence estimate. The embodimentfurther includes displaying a second translation confidence indicatorfor the at least one translation chunk. In the embodiment, the secondtranslation confidence indicator is determined from among a plurality ofdifferent second translation confidence indicators based upon the secondtranslation quality confidence estimate.

An embodiment further includes displaying a context information of thetranslation chunk indicating a context of the translation chunk withinthe source text. In an embodiment, the context information includes alocation within the source text where the translation chunk is found. Inan embodiment, the context information further includes one or moreother translation chunks within the source text adjacent to thetranslation chunk.

In an embodiment, the context information further includes an indicationof a location within a target language training corpus that was used toderive the translation chunk. In an embodiment, the displaying of thecontext information of the translation chunk is responsive to a firstuser input. In an embodiment, the first user input includes placing amouse cursor upon the translation chunk.

An embodiment further includes displaying an alignment betweencorresponding translation chunks in the source text and the translationtext output. In an embodiment, the displaying of the alignment isresponsive to a second user input. In an embodiment, the second userinput includes clicking a mouse pointer upon the translation chunk.

An embodiment further includes receiving a user input indicating amoving of the translation chunk in the translation text output. In anembodiment, the translation chunk includes a phrase. In an embodiment,each of the plurality of different second translation confidenceindicators includes a different color. In an embodiment, each of theplurality of different second translation confidence indicators includesa different font.

An embodiment includes a computer usable program product. The computerusable program product includes one or more computer-readable storagedevices, and program instructions stored on at least one of the one ormore storage devices.

An embodiment includes a computer system. The computer system includesone or more processors, one or more computer-readable memories, and oneor more computer-readable storage devices, and program instructionsstored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for executionby at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of theone or more memories.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Certain novel features believed characteristic of the invention are setforth in the appended claims. The invention itself, however, as well asa preferred mode of use, further objectives and advantages thereof, willbest be understood by reference to the following detailed description ofthe illustrative embodiments when read in conjunction with theaccompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 depicts a block diagram of a network of data processing systemsin which illustrative embodiments may be implemented;

FIG. 2 depicts a block diagram of a data processing system in whichillustrative embodiments may be implemented;

FIG. 3 depicts a block diagram of an example configuration of a serverfor providing adaptive quality estimation for machine translation duringpost-editing of a translated document in accordance with an illustrativeembodiment;

FIG. 4 depicts a block diagram of an example configuration of a clientdevice for receiving adaptive quality estimation for machine translationduring post-editing of a translated document in accordance with anillustrative embodiment;

FIG. 5 depicts an embodiment of training, decoding, and qualityestimation prediction processes of the machine translation (MT)application of FIG. 1;

FIG. 6 depicts an example of a graphical user interface (GUI) inaccordance with an illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 7 depicts another example of a graphical user interface (GUI) inaccordance with an illustrative embodiment; and

FIG. 8 depicts a flowchart of an example process for providing adaptivequality estimation for machine translation during post-editing of atranslated document in accordance with an illustrative embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

One or more embodiments are directed to a method, system, and computerprogram product for providing adaptive quality estimation for machinetranslation during post-editing of translated documents. Machinetranslation (MT) systems often suffer from inconsistent andunpredictable translation quality. Given an MT system, depending on thedifficulty of the input sentences (words, sentence structures or thelevel of match with the MT system's training data), some translationoutputs can be perfect and error-free, while others are ungrammatical,missing important words or even totally garbled. As a result, users donot know whether and when they can trust the translation output. Thisshortcoming significantly hurdles the adoption of MT systems, especiallyin machine assisted translation post-editing. Human translators oftentranslate the foreign sentences from scratch instead of editing existingMT outputs, even if some outputs are very accurate and post editingthose outputs could potentially lead to significant cost savings.

As a result, it would be beneficial to provide a confidence estimationof MT output quality to the users, who can decide whether to accept theMT outputs or make minor modifications for “good” translations or skipthe MT output altogether and translate from scratch for “bad”translations. As a result, significant time-savings can be achieved byavoiding the reading and parsing low quality MT output, thus improvingthe user experience. Existing approaches of MT quality estimation relyon lexical and syntactical features defined over parallel sentence pairs(including source sentences, MT outputs and reference translations) andtranslation models. In existing MT quality estimation approaches, whenthe MT confidence estimation model is trained, the model is fixed andwill not adapt to different input documents or translation models.However, translation models adapted to different input documents cansignificantly improve the translation quality.

The illustrative embodiments recognize that the presently availabletools or solutions do not address these needs or provide adequatesolutions for these needs. The illustrative embodiments used to describethe invention generally address and solve the above-described problemsand other problems related to providing quality estimation for machinetranslation outputs.

An embodiment can be implemented as a software application. Theapplication implementing an embodiment can be configured as amodification of an existing MT system, as a separate application thatoperates in conjunction with an existing MT system, a standaloneapplication, or some combination thereof.

One or more embodiments describe an adaptive quality estimation processfor machine translation post-editing tasks in which a document-specificmachine translation (MT) system is built for each input document. In theembodiment, the MT system extracts sentence pairs most similar to theinput document from a corpus, and trains an adaptive quality estimationmodel using the extracted sentence pairs. In the embodiment, the MTsystem predicts a translation error rate (TER) using the adaptivequality estimation model and provides a user interface to display thequality estimation results to a user in conjunction with the translationoutput.

In an embodiment, a graphical user interface (GUI) displays translationchunks, such as words or phrases, in a translation output window withdifferent quality confidence indicators using different fonts and/orcolors. In an embodiment, the GUI displays both source and targetcontext information for phrase translation pairs. In an embodiment, theGUI displays an alignment between translation phrase pairs and allowsmovement and editing of translation chunks to improve translationaccuracy as well as the translator's efficiency.

In another embodiment, the GUI presents a user with translation qualityindicators, and allows the user to decide whether to accept or modifythe MT translation output, re-use part of the translation, or reject thetranslation and translate a portion of the translation output usinghuman translation.

In an embodiment, a user interface is provided to display both sentencelevel translation quality estimation and phrase level translationconfidence. In an embodiment, on a sentence level the predictedtranslation error rate (PIER) of a sentence is represented in the GUI bya multi scale translation confidence indicator. In the embodiment, on aphrase level, the confidence of the translation of the phrase isrepresented with different fonts and/or colors.

In a particular embodiment, when a mouse cursor is placed on a phrase ofthe translated text, context information of the phrase, such as thewhere the phrase is extracted, is displayed in a popup window within theGUI. In the embodiment, when the mouse cursor is clicked on thetranslation, phrase level alignment between the source sentence and MToutput is displayed in a popup window of the GUI, which allows the userto observe the relationship of the source and target phrases. In aparticular embodiment, the GUI allows the user to move a whole phrase toaddress word order translation errors if necessary.

Various embodiments described herein build a document specific MT systemfor each document to be translated enabling the model to be a bettermatch to a source document than static MT systems. In variousembodiment, a quality estimation model is also adaptively trained thatmay outperform static quality estimation models. In various embodiments,quality estimation is not only conducted on the whole sentence level,but also on subsentential level, in which high confident words/phrasesare highlighted. In various embodiments, overall sentence translationquality and confident regions are presented to the user in order toimprove a translator's productivity and user experience.

The illustrative embodiments are described with respect to certain typesof documents, corpora, transmissions, translations, procedures,algorithms, GUIs, devices, data processing systems, environments,components, and applications only as examples. Any specificmanifestations of these and other similar artifacts are not intended tobe limiting to the invention. Any suitable manifestation of these andother similar artifacts can be selected within the scope of theillustrative embodiments.

Furthermore, the illustrative embodiments may be implemented withrespect to any type of data, data source, or access to a data sourceover a data network. Any type of data storage device may provide thedata to an embodiment of the invention, either locally at a dataprocessing system or over a data network, within the scope of theinvention. Where an embodiment is described using a mobile device, anytype of data storage device suitable for use with the mobile device mayprovide the data to such embodiment, either locally at the mobile deviceor over a data network, within the scope of the illustrativeembodiments.

The illustrative embodiments are described using specific code, designs,architectures, protocols, layouts, schematics, and tools only asexamples and are not limiting to the illustrative embodiments.Furthermore, the illustrative embodiments are described in someinstances using particular software, tools, and data processingenvironments only as an example for the clarity of the description. Theillustrative embodiments may be used in conjunction with othercomparable or similarly purposed structures, systems, applications, orarchitectures. For example, other comparable mobile devices, structures,systems, applications, or architectures therefor, may be used inconjunction with such embodiment of the invention within the scope ofthe invention. An illustrative embodiment may be implemented inhardware, software, or a combination thereof.

The examples in this disclosure are used only for the clarity of thedescription and are not limiting to the illustrative embodiments.Additional data, operations, actions, tasks, activities, andmanipulations will be conceivable from this disclosure and the same arecontemplated within the scope of the illustrative embodiments.

Any advantages listed herein are only examples and are not intended tobe limiting to the illustrative embodiments. Additional or differentadvantages may be realized by specific illustrative embodiments.Furthermore, a particular illustrative embodiment may have some, all, ornone of the advantages listed above.

With reference to the figures and in particular with reference to FIGS.1 and 2, these figures are example diagrams of data processingenvironments in which illustrative embodiments may be implemented. FIGS.1 and 2 are only examples and are not intended to assert or imply anylimitation with regard to the environments in which differentembodiments may be implemented. A particular implementation may makemany modifications to the depicted environments based on the followingdescription.

FIG. 1 depicts a block diagram of a network of data processing systemsin which illustrative embodiments may be implemented. Data processingenvironment 100 is a network of computers in which the illustrativeembodiments may be implemented. Data processing environment 100 includesnetwork 102. Network 102 is the medium used to provide communicationslinks between various devices and computers connected together withindata processing environment 100. Network 102 may include connections,such as wire, wireless communication links, or fiber optic cables.

Clients or servers are only example roles of certain data processingsystems connected to network 102 and are not intended to exclude otherconfigurations or roles for these data processing systems. Server 104and server 106 couple to network 102 along with storage unit 108.Software applications may execute on any computer in data processingenvironment 100. Clients 110, 112, and 114 are also coupled to network102. A data processing system, such as server 104 or 106, or client 110,112, or 114 may contain data and may have software applications orsoftware tools executing thereon.

Only as an example, and without implying any limitation to sucharchitecture, FIG. 1 depicts certain components that are usable in anexample implementation of an embodiment. For example, servers 104 and106, and clients 110, 112, 114, are depicted as servers and clients onlyas example and not to imply a limitation to a client-serverarchitecture. As another example, an embodiment can be distributedacross several data processing systems and a data network as shown,whereas another embodiment can be implemented on a single dataprocessing system within the scope of the illustrative embodiments. Dataprocessing systems 104, 106, 110, 112, and 114 also represent examplenodes in a cluster, partitions, and other configurations suitable forimplementing an embodiment.

Device 132 is an example of a device described herein. For example,device 132 can take the form of a smartphone, a tablet computer, alaptop computer, client 110 in a stationary or a portable form, awearable computing device, or any other suitable device. Any softwareapplication described as executing in another data processing system inFIG. 1 can be configured to execute in device 132 in a similar manner.Any data or information stored or produced in another data processingsystem in FIG. 1 can be configured to be stored or produced in device132 in a similar manner.

Machine translation (MT) application 105 implements an embodimentdescribed herein. In other embodiments, MT application 105 may beconfigured to perform the machine translation and quality estimationprocesses described herein. Repository 109 may be stored in storage 108as shown or supplied by another source (not shown) and may includetraining documents, training corpus, and other documents and trainingdata as described herein. Client 110 includes a client application 140configured to provide a user interface as further described herein.

Servers 104 and 106, storage unit 108, and clients 110, 112, and 114,and device 132 may couple to network 102 using wired connections,wireless communication protocols, or other suitable data connectivity.Clients 110, 112, and 114 may be, for example, personal computers ornetwork computers.

In the depicted example, server 104 may provide data, such as bootfiles, operating system images, and applications to clients 110, 112,and 114. Clients 110, 112, and 114 may be clients to server 104 in thisexample. Clients 110, 112, 114, or some combination thereof, may includetheir own data, boot files, operating system images, and applications.Data processing environment 100 may include additional servers, clients,and other devices that are not shown.

In the depicted example, data processing environment 100 may be theInternet. Network 102 may represent a collection of networks andgateways that use the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol(TCP/IP) and other protocols to communicate with one another. At theheart of the Internet is a backbone of data communication links betweenmajor nodes or host computers, including thousands of commercial,governmental, educational, and other computer systems that route dataand messages. Of course, data processing environment 100 also may beimplemented as a number of different types of networks, such as forexample, an intranet, a local area network (LAN), or a wide area network(WAN). FIG. 1 is intended as an example, and not as an architecturallimitation for the different illustrative embodiments.

Among other uses, data processing environment 100 may be used forimplementing a client-server environment in which the illustrativeembodiments may be implemented. A client-server environment enablessoftware applications and data to be distributed across a network suchthat an application functions by using the interactivity between aclient data processing system and a server data processing system. Dataprocessing environment 100 may also employ a service orientedarchitecture where interoperable software components distributed acrossa network may be packaged together as coherent business applications.Data processing environment 100 may also take the form of a cloud, andemploy a cloud computing model of service delivery for enablingconvenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurablecomputing resources (e.g. networks, network bandwidth, servers,processing, memory, storage, applications, virtual machines, andservices) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimalmanagement effort or interaction with a provider of the service.

With reference to FIG. 2, this figure depicts a block diagram of a dataprocessing system in which illustrative embodiments may be implemented.Data processing system 200 is an example of a computer, such as servers104 and 106, or clients 110, 112, and 114 in FIG. 1, or another type ofdevice in which computer usable program code or instructionsimplementing the processes may be located for the illustrativeembodiments.

Data processing system 200 is also representative of a data processingsystem or a configuration therein, such as data processing system 132 inFIG. 1 in which computer usable program code or instructionsimplementing the processes of the illustrative embodiments may belocated. Data processing system 200 is described as a computer only asan example, without being limited thereto. Implementations in the formof other devices, such as device 132 in FIG. 1, may modify dataprocessing system 200, such as by adding a touch interface, and eveneliminate certain depicted components from data processing system 200without departing from the general description of the operations andfunctions of data processing system 200 described herein.

In the depicted example, data processing system 200 employs a hubarchitecture including North Bridge and memory controller hub (NB/MCH)202 and South Bridge and input/output (I/O) controller hub (SB/ICH) 204.Processing unit 206, main memory 208, and graphics processor 210 arecoupled to North Bridge and memory controller hub (NB/MCH) 202.Processing unit 206 may contain one or more processors and may beimplemented using one or more heterogeneous processor systems.Processing unit 206 may be a multi-core processor. Graphics processor210 may be coupled to NB/MCH 202 through an accelerated graphics port(AGP) in certain implementations.

In the depicted example, local area network (LAN) adapter 212 is coupledto South Bridge and I/O controller hub (SB/ICH) 204. Audio adapter 216,keyboard and mouse adapter 220, modem 222, read only memory (ROM) 224,universal serial bus (USB) and other ports 232, and PCI/PCIe devices 234are coupled to South Bridge and I/O controller hub 204 through bus 238.Hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) 226 and CD-ROM 230 arecoupled to South Bridge and I/O controller hub 204 through bus 240.PCI/PCIe devices 234 may include, for example, Ethernet adapters, add-incards, and PC cards for notebook computers. PCI uses a card buscontroller, while PCIe does not. ROM 224 may be, for example, a flashbinary input/output system (BIOS). Hard disk drive 226 and CD-ROM 230may use, for example, an integrated drive electronics (IDE), serialadvanced technology attachment (SATA) interface, or variants such asexternal-SATA (eSATA) and micro-SATA (mSATA). A super I/O (SIO) device236 may be coupled to South Bridge and I/O controller hub (SB/ICH) 204through bus 238.

Memories, such as main memory 208, ROM 224, or flash memory (not shown),are some examples of computer usable storage devices. Hard disk drive orsolid state drive 226, CD-ROM 230, and other similarly usable devicesare some examples of computer usable storage devices including acomputer usable storage medium.

An operating system runs on processing unit 206. The operating systemcoordinates and provides control of various components within dataprocessing system 200 in FIG. 2. The operating system may be acommercially available operating system for any type of computingplatform, including but not limited to server systems, personalcomputers, and mobile devices. An object oriented or other type ofprogramming system may operate in conjunction with the operating systemand provide calls to the operating system from programs or applicationsexecuting on data processing system 200.

Instructions for the operating system, the object-oriented programmingsystem, and applications or programs, such as application 105 in FIG. 1,are located on storage devices, such as in the form of code 226A on harddisk drive 226, and may be loaded into at least one of one or morememories, such as main memory 208, for execution by processing unit 206.The processes of the illustrative embodiments may be performed byprocessing unit 206 using computer implemented instructions, which maybe located in a memory, such as, for example, main memory 208, read onlymemory 224, or in one or more peripheral devices.

Furthermore, in one case, code 226A may be downloaded over network 201Afrom remote system 201B, where similar code 201C is stored on a storagedevice 201D. in another case, code 226A may be downloaded over network201A to remote system 201B, where downloaded code 201C is stored on astorage device 201D.

The hardware in FIGS. 1-2 may vary depending on the implementation.Other internal hardware or peripheral devices, such as flash memory,equivalent non-volatile memory, or optical disk drives and the like, maybe used in addition to or in place of the hardware depicted in FIGS.1-2. In addition, the processes of the illustrative embodiments may beapplied to a multiprocessor data processing system.

In some illustrative examples, data processing system 200 may be apersonal digital assistant (PDA), which is generally configured withflash memory to provide non-volatile memory for storing operating systemfiles and/or user-generated data. A bus system may comprise one or morebuses, such as a system bus, an I/O bus, and a PCI bus. Of course, thebus system may be implemented using any type of communications fabric orarchitecture that provides for a transfer of data between differentcomponents or devices attached to the fabric or architecture.

A communications unit may include one or more devices used to transmitand receive data, such as a modem or a network adapter. A memory may be,for example, main memory 208 or a cache, such as the cache found inNorth Bridge and memory controller hub 202. A processing unit mayinclude one or more processors or CPUs.

The depicted examples in FIGS. 1-2 and above-described examples are notmeant to imply architectural limitations. For example, data processingsystem 200 also may be a tablet computer, laptop computer, or telephonedevice in addition to taking the form of a mobile or wearable device.

Where a computer or data processing system is described as a virtualmachine, a virtual device, or a virtual component, the virtual machine,virtual device, or the virtual component operates in the manner of dataprocessing system 200 using virtualized manifestation of some or allcomponents depicted in data processing system 200. For example, in avirtual machine, virtual device, or virtual component, processing unit206 is manifested as a virtualized instance of all or some number ofhardware processing units 206 available in a host data processingsystem, main memory 208 is manifested as a virtualized instance of allor some portion of main memory 208 that may be available in the hostdata processing system, and disk 226 is manifested as a virtualizedinstance of all or some portion of disk 226 that may be available in thehost data processing system. The host data processing system in suchcases is represented by data processing system 200.

With reference to FIG. 3, this figure depicts a block diagram of anexample configuration of a server for providing adaptive qualityestimation for machine translation during post-editing of a translateddocument in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. Server 104 is anexample of message source server 104 of FIG. 1 and includes a processor302, a memory 304, and a machine translation (MT) application 105.Processor 302 is configured to retrieve instructions from memory 304 andexecute the instructions to perform various operations of server 104 asdescribed herein.

Server application 105 a document-specific MT system component 306, anadaptive quality estimation model component 308, and a translation errorrate component 310. Server application 105 is configured to performoperations associated with providing adaptive quality estimation formachine translation during post-editing of a translated document asdescribed herein. Document-specific MT system component 306 isconfigured to build a document-specific MT system for each inputdocument as further described herein. Adaptive quality estimation modelcomponent 308 is configured to store a trained adaptive qualityestimation model as further described herein. Translation error ratecomponent 310 is configured to predict a translation error rate (TER) oftranslation chunks using the adaptive quality estimation model.

With reference to FIG. 4, this figure depicts a block diagram of anexample configuration of a client device for receiving adaptive qualityestimation for machine translation during post-editing of a translateddocument in accordance with an illustrative embodiment. Client device110 is an example of client device 110 of FIG. 1 and includes aprocessor 402, a memory 404, a user input device 406, a display device408, and a client application 140. Processor 402 is configured toretrieve instructions from memory 404 and execute the instructions toperform various operations of client device 110 as described herein. Inone or more embodiments, user input device 406 is configured to provideone or more input devices to allow the user to interact with clientdevice 110. In one or more embodiments, display device 408 is configuredto display machine translation output to a user of client device 110.Client application 140 includes a graphical user interface (GUI)component 410 to provide a user interface as described herein.

With reference to FIG. 5, this figure depicts an embodiment of training,decoding, and quality estimation prediction processes of the machinetranslation (MT) application 105 of FIG. 1. In the embodiment, a sourceinput document 502 that includes text of a source language that isdesired to translated to a target language is provide to a subsampleprocess 504. A sentence aligned parallel corpus 506 and a qualityestimation (QE) source sentence 508 are also provide to subsampleprocess 504. Subsample process 504 uses source input document 502 andsentence aligned parallel corpus 506 to subsample source input document502 and provides the subsampled input document information to adocument-specific MT system building process 510. Document-specific MTsystem building process 510 uses the subsampled parallel corpus and atarget monolingual corpus 512 to build a document-specific MT system.

An MT decoder process 514 decodes the source input document 502 usingthe document-specific MT system to produce a MT output 516. MT decoderprocess 514 further decodes the QE source sentence to produce a QE MToutput 518. An adaptive quality estimation training process 522 receivesQE source sentence 508 and QE MT output 518. Adaptive QE trainingprocess 522 uses QE source sentence 508, QE MT output 518, and a QEtarget sentence 520 to train an adaptive QE model. The adaptive QE modelproduces a quality estimation of MT output 516 and provides a machinetranslation QE score 526.

With reference to FIG. 6, this figure depicts an example of a graphicaluser interface (GUI) 600 in accordance with an illustrative embodiment.GUI 600 includes a source window 602, a translation proposal window 604,and a phrase context window 606. Source window 602 includes a sourcetext in a first language that is desired to be translated into a secondlanguage. In the example illustrated in FIG. 6, a source text in theEnglish language is desired to be translated to the Japanese language.Translation proposal window 604 includes a sentence level translationquality estimation in which predicted translation error rate (PTER) isrepresented by a multi-scale translation confidence indicator in whichhigh quality translated sentence is indicated by five stars “*****”, amedium quality translated sentence is indicated by three stars “***”,and a low quality translated sentence is represented by one star “*”.Although the particular embodiment illustrated in FIG. 6 is shown asusing stars to indicate the translation quality of a particularsentence, in other embodiments other suitable visual indicators may beused to represent a multi-scale translation confidence indicator.

Translation proposal window 604 further includes a translationconfidence indicator of one or more phrases of the translation outputwithin the translation proposal windows 604. In one or more embodiments,a highlight color is used as a translation confidence indicator of thephrases of the translation output. In the embodiment of FIG. 6, a firstcolor is used as a translation confidence indicator to indicate a highquality phrase, a second color is used as a translation confidenceindicator to indicate a medium quality phrase, and no color is used toindicate a low quality phrase.

In the embodiment of FIG. 6, when a user uses GUI 600 to place a mousecursor on a particular phrase within translation proposal window 604,GUI 600 displays phrase context window 606 in a pop-up window. Phrasecontext window 606 displays context information of the phrase indicatinga context of the phrase within the source text. In one or moreembodiments, phrase context window 606 includes an indication of alocation within the source text where the phrase is found as well as oneor more words or phrases adjacent to, such as occurring before and/orafter, the phrase within the source text. In one or more embodiments,the context window also includes an indication of a location within atarget language training corpus that was used to derive the translatedphrase.

With reference to FIG. 7, this figure depicts another example of agraphical user interface (GUI) 700 in accordance with an illustrativeembodiment. GUI 700 includes a source window 702, a translation proposalwindow 704, and a phrase alignment window 706. Source window 702includes a source text in a first language that is desired to betranslated into a second language. In the example illustrated in FIG. 7,a source text in the English language is desired to be translated to theJapanese language.

In the embodiment of FIG. 7, when a user uses GUI 600 to place a mousecursor on a particular phrase within translation proposal window 604 andclick on the phrase, GUI 700 displays phrase alignment window 706 in apop-up window. Phrase alignment window 706 displays a phrase levelalignment between phrases in the source text and machine translationoutput. Phrase alignment window 706 allows a user to observe therelationship of the source and target phrases, as well as allow the userto move particular phrases to address word order translation errors. Inthe particular example of FIG. 7, phrase alignment window 706 displays aline connecting each phrase in the source text to a corresponding phrasein the machine translation output.

With reference to FIG. 8, this figure depicts a flowchart of an exampleprocess 800 for providing adaptive quality estimation for machinetranslation during post-editing of a translated document in accordancewith an illustrative embodiment. In 802, MT application 105 receives aninput document including source text in a first language that is desiredto be translated to a second language. In 804, MT application 105 buildsor constructs a machine translation (MT) system corresponding to theinput document. In one or more embodiments, MT application 105 furthertranslates the input document to the second language to produce an MTtarget output including translated text in the second language. In block806, MT application 105 extracts sentence pairs most similar to theinput document and the QE source sentence from a parallel corpus. Inblock 808, MT application 105 trains the adaptive MT model. In block810, MT application 105 decodes a QE source sentence. In block 812, MTapplication 105 trains an adaptive quality estimation model using theextracted sentence pairs and the QE source sentence. In block 814, theMT system predicts a translation error rate (TER) as a translationquality confidence estimate for each sentence of the target output textand each translation chunk using the adaptive quality estimation model.In or more embodiments, a translation chunk includes a word and/orphrase of the target output text. In one or more embodiments, MTapplication 105 sends the source text, target output text, andtranslation quality estimate for each sentence and phrase to clientdevice 110.

In block 816, client device 110 presents a GUI to display the qualityestimation results to a user in conjunction with the translated targetoutput text. In an embodiment, the GUI displays both sentence leveltranslation quality confidence estimation and translation chunk (e.g., aphrase level) translation confidence estimation. In an embodiment, on asentence level the predicted translation error rate (PIER) of a sentenceis represented in the GUI by a multi-scale translation confidenceindicator. In one or more embodiments, client device 110 displays afirst translation confidence indicator for one or more sentences inwhich the first translation confidence indicator is determined fromamong a plurality of different first translation confidence indicatorsbased upon the first translation quality confidence estimate.

In block 818, client device 110 displays one or more of the translationchunks within the GUI with different visual indicators based upon thetranslation quality confidence estimate. In a particular embodiment, theGUI displays translation chunks, such as words or phrases, in atranslation output window with different translation quality confidenceindicators using different fonts and/or colors based upon thetranslation quality confidence estimate of the particular translationchunk. In one or more embodiments, client device 110 displays a secondtranslation confidence indicator for one or more translation chunks inwhich the second translation confidence indicator is determined fromamong a plurality of different second translation confidence indicatorsbased upon the second translation quality confidence estimate.

In block 820, client device 110 displays one or more of source contextinformation and target context information for one or more of thetranslation chunks. In an embodiment, the source context informationindicates a context of the phrase within the source text, and the targetcontext information of the information within the translated text of thetranslated output. In one or more embodiments, the GUI includes a phrasecontext window that includes an indication of a location within thesource text where the phrase is found as well as one or more words orphrases occurring before and/or after the phrase within the source text.In one or more embodiments, the context window also includes anindication of a location within a target language training corpus thatwas used to derive the translated phrase. In one or more embodiments,the displaying of the context information is responsive to a first userinput such as placing a mouse pointer upon a particular translationchunk. In a particular embodiment, when a mouse cursor is placed on atranslation chunk (e.g., phrase) of the translated text, contextinformation of the phrase, such as the where the phrase is extractedfrom the training corpus, is displayed in a pop-up window within theGUI.

In block 822, client device 110 displays an alignment betweentranslation chunks (e.g., phrase pairs) between the source text and thetranslated text within the GUI. In one or more embodiments, thedisplaying of the alignment information is responsive to a second userinput such as clicking a mouse pointer upon a particular translationchunk. In a particular embodiment, when a mouse cursor is clicked on thetranslated phrase, phrase level alignment between the source sentenceand MT output is displayed in a pop-up window of the GUI, which allowsthe user to observe the relationship of the source and target phrases.In block 824, client device 110 receives one or more user edits of thetranslation chunks to move a particular translation chunk within thetranslation output such as to address word order translation errors ifnecessary. The procedure 800 then ends.

Thus, a computer implemented method, system or apparatus, and computerprogram product are provided in the illustrative embodiments forproviding adaptive quality estimation for machine translation duringpost-editing of a translated document and other related features,functions, or operations. Where an embodiment or a portion thereof isdescribed with respect to a type of device, the computer implementedmethod, system or apparatus, the computer program product, or a portionthereof, are adapted or configured for use with a suitable andcomparable manifestation of that type of device.

Where an embodiment is described as implemented in an application, thedelivery of the application in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model iscontemplated within the scope of the illustrative embodiments. In a SaaSmodel, the capability of the application implementing an embodiment isprovided to a user by executing the application in a cloudinfrastructure. The user can access the application using a variety ofclient devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser(e.g., web-based e-mail), or other light-weight client-applications. Theuser does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructureincluding the network, servers, operating systems, or the storage of thecloud infrastructure. In some cases, the user may not even manage orcontrol the capabilities of the SaaS application. In some other cases,the SaaS implementation of the application may permit a possibleexception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

The present invention may be a system, a method, and/or a computerprogram product at any possible technical detail level of integration.The computer program product may include a computer readable storagemedium (or media) having computer readable program instructions thereonfor causing a processor to carry out aspects of the present invention.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/oredge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present invention may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, configuration data for integrated circuitry, oreither source code or object code written in any combination of one ormore programming languages, including an object oriented programminglanguage such as Smalltalk, C++, or the like, and procedural programminglanguages, such as the “C” programming language or similar programminglanguages. The computer readable program instructions may executeentirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as astand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partlyon a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. Inthe latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user'scomputer through any type of network, including a local area network(LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to anexternal computer (for example, through the Internet using an InternetService Provider). In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including,for example, programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gatearrays (FPGA), or programmable logic arrays (PLA) may execute thecomputer readable program instructions by utilizing state information ofthe computer readable program instructions to personalize the electroniccircuitry, in order to perform aspects of the present invention.

Aspects of the present invention are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computeror other programmable data processing apparatus, create means forimplementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or blockdiagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructionsmay also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can directa computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or otherdevices to function in a particular manner, such that the computerreadable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises anarticle of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects ofthe function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram blockor blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block orblocks.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in theflowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the blocks may occur out of theorder noted in the Figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks maysometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocksin the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implementedby special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specifiedfunctions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardwareand computer instructions.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: receiving a translation textoutput, the translation text output corresponding to a machinetranslation from a document comprising source text of a first languageto a target text of a second language, the translation text outputincluding at least one sentence, the at least one sentence including atleast one translation chunk, wherein the machine translation employs anadaptive quality estimation model, and wherein a document-specificmachine translation system is built for each document; receiving a firsttranslation quality confidence estimate for the at least one sentence oftext; receiving a second translation quality confidence estimate for theat least one translation chunk; displaying a first translationconfidence indicator for the at least one sentence, the firsttranslation confidence indicator determined from among a plurality ofdifferent first translation confidence indicators based upon the firsttranslation quality confidence estimate; displaying a second translationconfidence indicator for the at least one translation chunk, the secondtranslation confidence indicator determined from among a plurality ofdifferent second translation confidence indicators based upon the secondtranslation quality confidence estimate; and training the adaptivequality estimation model using at least the source text, the targettext, and the first translation quality confidence estimate.
 2. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising: displaying a context informationof the translation chunk indicating a context of the translation chunkwithin the source text.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the contextinformation includes a location within the source text where thetranslation chunk is found.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein thecontext information further includes one or more other translationchunks within the source text adjacent to the translation chunk.
 5. Themethod of claim 2, wherein the context information further includes anindication of a location within a target language training corpus thatwas used to derive the translation chunk.
 6. The method of claim 2,wherein the displaying of the context information of the translationchunk is responsive to a first user input.
 7. The method of claim 6,wherein the first user input includes placing a mouse cursor upon thetranslation chunk.
 8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:displaying an alignment between corresponding translation chunks in thesource text and the translation text output.
 9. The method of claim 8,wherein the displaying of the alignment is responsive to a second userinput.
 10. The method of claim 9, wherein the second user input includesclicking a mouse pointer upon the translation chunk.
 11. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising: receiving a user input indicating a movingof the translation chunk in the translation text output.
 12. The methodof claim 1, wherein the translation chunk includes a phrase.
 13. Themethod of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of different secondtranslation confidence indicators includes a different color.
 14. Themethod of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of different secondtranslation confidence indicators includes a different font.
 15. Acomputer usable program product comprising one or more computer-readablestorage devices, and program instructions stored on at least one of theone or more storage devices, the stored program instructions comprising:program instructions to receive a translation text output, thetranslation text output corresponding to a machine translation from adocument comprising source text of a first language to a target text ofa second language, the translation text output including at least onesentence, the at least one sentence including at least one translationchunk, wherein the machine translation employs an adaptive qualityestimation model, and wherein a document-specific machine translationsystem is built for each document; program instructions to receive afirst translation quality confidence estimate for the at least onesentence of text; program instructions to receive a second translationquality confidence estimate for the at least one translation chunk;program instructions to display a first translation confidence indicatorfor the at least one sentence, the first translation confidenceindicator determined from among a plurality of different firsttranslation confidence indicators based upon the first translationquality confidence estimate; and program instructions to display asecond translation confidence indicator for the at least one translationchunk, the second translation confidence indicator determined from amonga plurality of different second translation confidence indicators basedupon the second translation quality confidence estimate; and programinstructions to train the adaptive quality estimation model using atleast the source text, the target text, and the first translationquality confidence estimate.
 16. The computer usable program product ofclaim 15, further comprising: program instructions to display a contextinformation of the translation chunk indicating a context of thetranslation chunk within the source text.
 17. The computer usableprogram product of claim 16, wherein the context information includes alocation within the source text where the translation chunk is found.18. The computer usable program product of claim 15, wherein thecomputer usable code is stored in a computer readable storage device ina data processing system, and wherein the computer usable code istransferred over a network from a remote data processing system.
 19. Thecomputer usable program product of claim 15, wherein the computer usablecode is stored in a computer readable storage device in a server dataprocessing system, and wherein the computer usable code is downloadedover a network to a remote data processing system for use in a computerreadable storage device associated with the remote data processingsystem.
 20. A computer system comprising one or more processors, one ormore computer-readable memories, and one or more computer-readablestorage devices, and program instructions stored on at least one of theone or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one ormore processors via at least one of the one or more memories, the storedprogram instructions comprising: program instructions to receive atranslation text output, the translation text output corresponding to amachine translation from a document comprising source text of a firstlanguage to a target text of a second language, the translation textoutput including at least one sentence, the at least one sentenceincluding at least one translation chunk, wherein the machinetranslation employs an adaptive quality estimation model, and wherein adocument-specific machine translation system is built for each document;program instructions to receive a first translation quality confidenceestimate for the at least one sentence of text; program instructions toreceive a second translation quality confidence estimate for the atleast one translation chunk; program instructions to display a firsttranslation confidence indicator for the at least one sentence, thefirst translation confidence indicator determined from among a pluralityof different first translation confidence indicators based upon thefirst translation quality confidence estimate; and program instructionsto display a second translation confidence indicator for the at leastone translation chunk, the second translation confidence indicatordetermined from among a plurality of different second translationconfidence indicators based upon the second translation qualityconfidence estimate; and program instructions to train the adaptivequality estimation model using at least the source text, the targettext, and the first translation quality confidence estimate.